3rd House Journal

Brrrr

Night light, Christmas model

Still trying to get to my holiday cards.

Tree's a crowd

First of all, let me say that we found a gorgeous tree, full and perfectly shaped and healthy. Last year's tree was also lovely, though a bit small. It's so hard to judge how a tree will look when you get it home and into its intended place of honor, especially when you haven't lived in your home long. Anyway, we found one the right height, but a bit rotund and, well, imperialistic with regards to the rest of my living room.

After setting it up in my front windows to relax its space-grabbing limbs yesterday, we headed out to (gasp) a mall so I could find a replacement pair of boots. The warm and cozy ones I loved so much last year gave out support on one side, causing strain in my calf muscle. While D finds shoe shopping the height of shopping pleasure, I shop for footwear with great trepidation, having had years of mostly bad experiences in shoe stores/departments desperately trying to find something that fits me in any reasonably comfortable fashion, good-looking or otherwise. The few vendors who've been exception to that rule have my undying loyalty, and even they don't always come through.

I also had a couple of things to return, so we stood in line for those things, then traipsed up and down the mall, stopping here and there to look at and try on various boots -- too big, too tight, no arch support, heel comes out, etc. -- and when I was about to collapse, went back to Clark's, one of my favorite happy-foot vendors (with very nice sales clerks, too) and purchased a decent pair, on sale no less.

So, by the time we got back, after stops to pick up farm fresh chicken for the curry I had planned and a bottle of wine, got dinner cooked and consumed, we were too tired to finish decorating the tree. And so it stands. Today I have a girl brunch to run off to mid-day, so maybe we'll get that done later. And then sometime this week after work get my holiday cards done...

Slime, stingers and brainless, gelatinous goo

[Sea nettle jellyfish, New England Aquarium; 11/13/09]

My day off on Friday was rainy due to the outlying remnants of Hurricane Ida, so we took advantage of a quiet weekday at the New England Aquarium on Boston's waterfront. We'd considered going a couple of times this summer while wandering in the vicinity, but the long lines (and no doubt crowds indoors) kept us away.

I was there a few years ago with my former housemate K while she was in vet school and considering career options, so this time I was more interested in trying out my camera settings than just enthralled with everything as I was the last time (see my photo set here). But there were still surprises and the unending fascination with the fish swimming in the giant ocean tank as well as the amazing jellies: "Dive into the realm of slime, stingers and brainless, gelatinous goo..."

[Moon jellies]

While Friday was drizzly and gray, Saturday saw torrential downpours until late afternoon, when it returned to drizzly. So we decided to go to the movies. We went to see This Is It, the movie of backstage rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson's would-be final tour. It was sad to see such talent wasted -- Michael Jackson's, of course, forever, but also the efforts of so many creative and talented people -- singers, dancers, choreographers, set designers, etc. They were certainly going to give the crowds their money's worth on tour. It is fortunate that so much was recorded that they were able to get mileage out of all that effort by producing this film.

On Sunday, the clouds finally lifted around mid-day, preventing us from turning into brainless, gelatinous goo. We made a nice brunch and then headed out to enjoy the day.

[Sunday brunch at the apartment; 11/15/09]

[Wet leaves plaster the Comm Ave Mall; around 3pm, 11/15/09]

Escape

[Downtown Boston; 11/15/09]

I escaped to the city for the weekend. More later...

Time off

[In the Back Bay, Boston; 10/31/09]

I managed to get a day off today, which is not easy last minute where I work. "Last minute" in this case being I asked for it the beginning of this week. Our schedules are such that there's very little slack built in, so you have to plan your time off well in advance. But anyway, D returned from his trip yesterday and I thought I'd grab some of my remaining PTO (paid time off) and make it a long weekend.

PTO means we don't have sick leave, just an allotment of time to use for vacation, sick days, trips to the doctor, or whatever. So, the Sick Day Excuse Generator and other helpful hints for taking a day off aren't especially helpful except, I suppose, if you have plenty of time left in your PTO pool and want a really last-minute excuse to not go in to work. Most of my remaining PTO will be used during my holiday visit to see my dad. And hopefully I will avoid getting the flu in the meantime.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Looking for balance

All the bright yellow leaves have fallen from the gray sky. They lay on the ground like sunlight seeping under the door of a shuttered room.

I tweeted that last Friday when I arrived at work, before the clouds cleared. I thought of it again on this morning's drive, seeing all the bright leaves on the ground, somehow turning the world topsy-turvy with all the sunny brightness coming from below.

I wanted to get outside today for a walk, but had a tight deadline to meet by the end of the day, so I worked through lunch and barely left my desk, save for a meeting. The last couple of days, I was able to take nice walks mid-day to offset the workstation cramping of my back and brain, to clear my head for half an hour or so. Since the weekend, we've had a few days of glorious Indian summer temperatures and I couldn't resist getting outside to enjoy them.

Indian summer: The wind tosses confetti-diced leaves for the grinning pumpkins. Crows caw in approval.

Yesterday, towards the end of a long workday, a colleague let us know he's leaving to go to another job. He's a good guy and also an excellent writer, very creative, and it's sad. Even in this tough job environment, we're still losing good people. It's a burnout type of job. I think they do try, and people there are nice, but maybe it's in the nature of the work, or maybe it's a culture of never setting limits with client requests for near impossible deadlines. It certainly doesn't help the workload to lose good people. I don't know. For all the times I do enjoy the work and like my colleagues, on the other side of the scale is the heavy thumb of pressures.

Gas-powered leaf blowers, the Tuvan throat singers of the suburbs, performing for an audience of empty houses.

For now I try to place every good work experience on the scale to keep things in balance, plus the salary and benefits, and any bit of appreciation that comes my way. I also offset the load with happy, work-free weekends and restorative nights when I can, and leg- and mind-stretching walking breaks when possible, even if these days those walks are often beset by the leaf-blowing crews.

Porch pumpkins

[Parade of pumpkins, Belmont, MA; 11/8/09]

Lovely Indian summer-like day today -- sunny and in the 60's, shirt-sleeve weather. But unlike summer, the darkness still comes early, setting at 4:30 today. I spent a rare day home alone catching up on things that needed doing, except for an errand and then a nice walk over to my old neighborhood (all the wonderful porches!). In June, I'd have felt like I had the rest of the day ahead of me to do many other things and still have time to relax awhile at the end. As sunset approaches now, there is just as much of the day left as in June, it just feels like there isn't.

Gray

[Gray sky, Boston; 10/24/09]

Despite the gray skies all day, I felt reasonably upbeat at work, I think mainly from having finally wrestled my training module into enough shape that I could now add the flourishes, the introductory and summary paragraphs, and begin revising things to flow better. In other words, the bushwhacking is mostly behind me and the peak is in sight, even if there turn out to be lots of switchbacks before I reach the top. And there will be switchbacks.

I got out for a quick walk after lunch before the rain began to spit. Mercifully the usual buzzing leaf-blowers were absent from my favorite woodsy private road, but there were two helicopters hovering over town, with an incessant droning. Odd that they didn't go away, I thought. Coming back through downtown, I saw nothing going on, but soon after I got back to the office I found out that a high school girl had been struck and killed by the commuter rail train that passes behind my building and the next-door high school fields and the school itself. Very sad. We see the teenagers walking and loitering around every day in the early afternoon. Apparently there's a hole in the fence behind the school and they often cross the tracks there. The T people fix the hole periodically, but somehow it always gets opened up again.

By the evening commute, the trains were running again, with the no-doubt nervous train engineers blowing their horns repeatedly as they rolled along the stretch of track where the accident happened. Such a haunting sound, train whistles.

Halloween in the City

[Store window, Newbury St, Boston; 10/31/09]

Halloween is supposed to be the time when the veil between the spirit and physical worlds is thin, the ghostly or ghastly becoming more visible to the living. That's why I liked this spectral image of a mannequin peering out through a headless silhouette all "decorated" with yellow fall foliage reflected from the street below. 

 

D spotted the window display and pointed it out to me on Saturday morning as we walked back from breakfast. We'd eaten at the Trident bookstore on Newbury St where we were seated by an apparent sheep (white cotton balls stuck all over her shirt) and waited on by a young woman wearing a bouncy skirt and 60s-style sweater set that we took to be a Mad Men theme. Later on, we saw an occasional odd sight such as a box of popcorn walking down Boylston St. At other times, we found ourselves asking whether this or that person was wearing a costume or whether it was just a fashion statement. Or, Does that guy have a really prodigious 'fro or is that a wig? No, I think that really is a homeless guy...

By evening, more Halloween revelers could be spotted on their way to parties or clubs, dapper vampires and bewitching witches and the like. Alas we had to leave mid-evening so D could drive me home and himself back to town to finish packing up for his early morning departure on an annual trip with the guys. The ghosts and goblins in my neighborhood were already heading home with their loot when I got home. Though I didn't have candy this year (in fact, I haven't given out candy at the door since I left Grafton, being out and about elsewhere every October 31), I knew I wouldn't miss out on all the sugary chocolate as my colleagues would be bringing in a large supply of leftover candy this week, and they did.